I love the Vietnamese sandwiches, Bahn Mi, with the perfect baguette with fresh, crunchy vegetables and your protein of choice!

One of my favorite cuisines to cook at home is Asian--I just love all the complex ingredients and how they mix together in different ways to create unique flavors. So I was pretty darn excited when Umlicious sent me a whole box of some of my favorite Asian ingredients! Umlicious is an online store for quality Asian products. This box filled with ingredients like sesame oil,gochujang, soy sauce, and fish sauceinspired this recipe!

The term Banh Mi actually means bread in Vietnamese. The traditional Banh Mi sandwich consists of
a french baguette with mayonnaise, cucumber, pickled carrots and daikon, cilantro with a protein, such as sliced pork.

I chose to do a spicy, Korean marinated shrimp to pair well with the sweet and bitter taste of the pickled carrots/daikon and to use the same marinate to make a spicy aioli instead of the normal mayo!

Serves: 2

Ingredients.

2 small French baguettes (about 6 inches in length)

8 shrimp, peeled, deveined and tails removed

1 medium cucumber, sliced lengthwise into 4 slices

1 carrot, peeled and julienned

1 daikon, peeled and julienned (this is a Japanese radish--it looks like a white carrot)

1/4 cup brown rice vinegar

1/8 cup sugar

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

Fresh cilantro, to taste

1 jalapeño pepper, sliced thin

For marinade:

1 tablespoon gochujang (Korean pepper paste)

1/2 tablespoon sesame oil

1/4 teaspoon fish sauce

1/2 tablespoon water

1/2 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon brown rice vinegar

2 garlic cloves, minced

Steps.

Step 1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Step 2. Mix all the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl until the sugar dissolves. Set aside 1 tablespoon of the marinade into a separate bowl. Add the shrimp into the bowl with the remaining marinade. Using your hands or a spoon, mix until the shrimp are fully coated with marinade.

Step 3. While the shrimp marinates, make the pickled carrots and daikon. In a mixing bowl, combine the vinegar and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Add the carrots and daikon into the bowl and mix and set aside.

Step 4. In a cast iron skillet (or sauté pan) on medium-high heat, cook shrimp for 4-5 minutes, or until cooked all the way through.

Step 5. While the shrimp are cooking, slice the baguettes and place right on the rack in the oven for a few minutes to toast. Make the spicy aioli by mixing 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise into the reserved 1 tablespoon of marinade.

Step 6. Once the bread is slightly toasted, assemble the sandwich: start by putting the spicy aioli onto both sides of the bread, then add the cucumbers, pickled carrots and daikon, fresh cilantro, jalapeños, and shrimp